Action and Theory is an executive coaching company that helps businesses to develop leadership skills and we offer management training courses. The three primary services are Coaching, Training and Facilitation. We work with organizations at board level, coaching individuals and teams. We facilitate board meetings and run Design Thinking workshops. The exact title for my role, from a financial perspective, is Managing Director, although I’m more of a coach and facilitator, which means I help facilitate how individuals think. Right now I’m working with a senior leader from a public sector organization, on their personal leadership

What do you use your CRM for?

My business is about relationship building. 70% of my business comes from referrals and relationships, so I have to be on top of my relationship management. So I use Nimble to track recent conversations and to check in to see when I last spoke to my clients. Nimble helps me to see if I need to do anything to maintain the relationship and stay in the forefront of their minds. I love that our business is very social in terms of human interaction. I email someone to start a conversation, or to check-in, and then we start having a dialogue, which usually leads to let’s have a cup of coffee, let’s go for a glass of wine. I use email, through Gmail, and LinkedIn to keep the relationships warm.

How does PieSync help you?

I use PieSync in conjunction with Nimble and Gmail. It just happens in the background! So, I’ve got these people marked on who’s important for me to be talking to. I check into Nimble and it tells me ‘you haven’t had a dialogue with this person, or you need to speak to this person every 30 days’. What PieSync does for me is keep everything up to date and pulls the people I need from my Gmail into Nimble. I then go through Nimble and see who is important.

Where do you get inspiration from?

I read a lot. I like [Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/), he’s a prolific blogger. I’m currently reading “Steal like an Artist” by Austin Kleon, it’s brilliant. This book is quite freeing because it frees you from the idea that you have to have an original idea. There’s no such thing as original ideas, everything is ‘stolen’ in some way.

Excerpt from “Steal Like an Artist”

My favorite quote is ‘Validation is for Parking.’ So when I’m talking to a client and they want permission or validation to be doing what they do, I tell them that. They need to give themselves permission, they don’t have to wait for validation from someone.

There’s this great quote from John Cleese that says “We don’t know where we get our ideas from, we do know we don’t get them from our laptops.” Click to Tweet.

I think you have to get away from the laptop and move about. I’m very happy if when I am working with a client I can get them out of their chairs and walking, moving is very important for idea creation.